Reflections on the Job Search

It was hard to get out of bed today. Not because of sleep deprivation, but the thought of facing another day of job hunting and being without a permanent job felt so discouraging that I wanted to pull the covers over my head and go back to sleep for a month or so until I could wake up with a job. I lay there and tried to think about things to motivate me to face the day. Pecan granola cereal. Dinner with the Pasadena guys tonight. Jesus, please be my joy, I kept thinking. Please be my joy.

Friday a week ago I was really discouraged by the job hunt. I'd been complaining about it a lot that week, and it wasn't a helpful external processing, but rather a general bitter complaining that left me feeling like somehow I was dishonoring God in the way I was talking about it, but I continued anyway. After I got off work at 1:30 pm on Friday, I got off the bus in Old Town and stopped in at a church I'd seen that had a sign outside saying that it was open for prayer. The old building was quiet inside, and I slipped into one of the pews and put my head on my hands.

I was angry and frustrated. Angry at God that he was supposed to be my provider and that I still didn't have a job. Frustrated and feeling guilty with myself for not putting enough effort and time into applying or pursuing leads--feeling like if I'd just achieve a certain level of diligence in the job search, I'd get a job, and that since I didn't have a job yet, clearly I wasn't working hard enough. I was confused whether to blame God, blame myself or both. And I felt guilty for blaming God when I knew I had abundant signs of his faithfulness and provision--like the temp job I have now where my boss and coworkers are amazing and are willing to keep me on while I search and also let me have all the time off I need for interviews and the like. All I could do was sit there in that pew and cry out to God all of my frustration and fear and hurt.

I didn't see any shining lights come down from heaven, but as I was sitting there, a couple passages in the book of Luke that we had recently studied together as an intern class came to mind, so I pulled my Bible out and found them. The first was Luke 11:9-13, where Jesus talks about how if you ask, you will receive, and how if human parents know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more so does God the Father. The second passage was Luke 12: 22-34. "Then Jesus said to his disciples: 'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!...your Father knows that you need [these things]. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.'"

As I read, what stood out to me more than anything else was how I have trouble trusting God. Trouble believing that I will experience God's gifts to me as good. Trouble believing that God will provide to me what I perceive I need. Trouble trusting, I suppose, in the the goodness and faithfulness of God. I read those promises of Jesus wondering if I really believed in them, if I could claim them in faith in my prayers. I left the church knowing that God had heard me and revealed those things in my heart to me, but still wrestling with all of the emotional baggage I'd brought in.

The next morning, I opened the Bible to the book of Psalms, which I've been reading over breakfast, and my eyes fell on Psalm 16 (italics mine):

Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing."
I say of the godly who are in the land, "They are the noble people in whom is all my delight."
Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour our their sacrifices of blood or take up their names on my lips.
Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundaries lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Do I believe that the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places? That apart from God I have no good thing, but with God he makes known to me the path of life?

Faith. Hope. Joy. Come, Lord Jesus come, I am desperate for you.